Page 48 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Elleray

O perating on his brother in the butler’s pantry was the last thing Jacob had expected to arise out of an argument about marriage. Seeing his assistance wasn’t needed inside, Alex had taken charge of the search for the gunman while Jacob battled to save the life of the new viscount.

Using the cook’s scissors, Jacob cut away the shirt, then ripped off the rest. The bullet had entered the right side of Arthur’s chest, but there was no exit wound.

Jacob bent down to hear if it had caught a lung.

His brother’s breathing was laboured but that was normal for a man in pain. Good. He gently probed the wound.

Arthur swore.

‘Sorry, brother. This is going to get worse before it gets better.’

‘You need to work… on your bedside manner,’ gasped the viscount. Furness helped him to a swig of brandy.

‘You’re getting my battlefield one. It’s the one you want as I will do this quickly and save your shoulder.’ Jacob could feel an object wedged between the clavicle and the second rib. That’s where the bugger had gone.

‘Finished the brandy?’

‘Yes,’ rasped Arthur. ‘Be quick.’

‘That’s the idea. Put the belt between his teeth,’ Jacob instructed Lord Furness. ‘Hold him down,’ he told the footmen. ‘Have the instruments been boiled?’ As the pincers had last been used by the cook to pluck shot out of gamebirds, he thought it as well to make sure they were cleaned thoroughly.

‘Yes, sir,’ confirmed the butler, presenting the pinchers on a silver tray like a duke’s calling card.

‘One moment.’ Jacob rolled up his shirt sleeves. Unlike many a battlefield, here he had the luxury of being able to wash his own hands thoroughly. No one was sure why, but infections were less likely if the surgeon took these precautions. He rinsed his hands and towelled off.

‘Tell Diana and the children I love them,’ croaked his brother.

‘None of that maudlin stuff. You will tell her yourself.’ Jacob counted to three, quickly probed into the wound with the pincer, clamped the bullet and whipped it out.

Arthur swore with a fluency that surprised Jacob.

Fresh blood welled now the wound was unplugged.

Jacob dropped the bullet on a tray. ‘Good man.’ He patted his brother’s uninjured shoulder.

‘Is it in one piece?’ he asked the butler as he pressed a swab to the injury.

‘I don’t know, sir. I can’t tell.’

‘Then wash it!’ He wanted to add ‘you fool’ but he had to remind himself he wasn’t working with experienced orderlies.

When the butler looked like he was going to treat the bullet like Venetian glassware, Lord Furness growled. ‘Hurry, man!’

The butler dunked the bullet in a cup of water then took it to the window to examine. ‘Yes, sir. In one piece.’

‘Thank God,’ muttered Jacob. He dropped the pinchers on the silver tray. ‘Good news, Arthur, I don’t have to go in again and I can sew you up. Let me just try to stop the bleeding.’

But his brother didn’t hear him. He had passed out cold.

* * *

With Viscount Sandys tucked up in a bedroom, wound dressed and out of immediate danger, Jacob sat on the terrace steps, shirt bloody and unbuttoned, head hanging.

The shock of the last hour was setting in.

He always found it easier when he had something to do.

He only let himself feel after his part was done.

In a battle, that could be a day later, depending on how many waves of battle injuries they had to deal with.

A single bullet wound was nothing to that.

And yet, it was different when it was someone you loved– and for all his faults, he did love his ridiculous older brother.

Lord Furness came to sit beside him. He wasn’t as bloodied as Jacob, but his face held the same shock at the sudden change to their morning.

‘Your brother saved my life,’ he said.

‘You think the shot was aimed at you?’ Jacob had been wondering.

The two peers had been standing together so to distinguish which was the target was almost impossible.

Unless that hadn’t mattered to the shooter: one peer, two peers, was the point to get a nobleman?

As with Leyburn it might have been about his role as a magistrate or a lord.

‘I thought so. The second shot hit the parapet by my head.’

A gut instinct was worth considering. And his brother had been struck when Arthur lunged to push Furness down, putting himself in the path of the first bullet.

‘Do you have any enemies that you know of?’

‘No one springs to mind.’ Furness rubbed a hand over his face.

‘What a business! Mr Wilson has ridden into Ambleside to raise more locals to sweep the woods, but I imagine the shooter will be long gone if your Mr Smith and my men don’t catch him.

There are so many ways to escape– onto the fells, across the lake, even along the road if he were quick enough and had a horse waiting. ’

That was all too true. They had lost valuable minutes in the confusion after the shot.

Jacob had been intent on saving his brother and it had taken precious seconds to explain what had happened to those that came running.

And yet the attack and the conversation that had come before had revealed so much, hadn’t they?

‘Lord Furness, I know you are here in the hopes of arranging a match between Lady Alice and myself and I thank you for this sign of your good opinion. However?—’

‘It’s only been further raised by seeing your competence, doctor. If I get shot, I’ll make sure they call for you.’

In the circumstances, that wasn’t a joke.

‘Unfortunately, in my case, practice makes perfect. It’s not the first bullet I’ve had to dig out of a man.

The good news is that was a straightforward injury, and my brother should recover if no infection sets in.

What I was going to say was that my brother has misled you if he suggested I agreed with his plan for me. ’

Lord Furness smiled wryly. ‘I would say he suggested that you were persuadable. My daughter is a difficult lady to please and she was pleased by you.’

‘That is also very flattering and quite underserved. The lady is everything that is desirable for a wife– clever, beautiful, talented. The problem is that I am not free to form an attachment.’

‘You are already engaged?’

Jacob hesitated. ‘I am not. But I feel obligated to another lady.’ No, that wasn’t sufficient. ‘I’m in love with someone else.’

Furness huffed out his disappointment. ‘Sandys did say you were headstrong. I thought it a good quality in a man who was to marry my daughter, who is equally stubborn. He said you needed to settle down, get a direction in your life, and she would give you that.’

‘I’ve chosen my own direction, and it doesn’t lie that way.

I wish her every happiness in a future match; I’m sure it will be one far superior to anything I can offer.

My advice, though, is that this is not the time to be thinking of marriage but of getting out of danger.

There is a violent criminal at large in the area.

After what just happened, I fear he might be targeting men of standing, such as yourself.

You heard of what happened to Sir Richard Leyburn? ’

‘Leyburn? You think it the same person? But that happened in London!’

‘The trouble seems to have begun here, travelled there and is now back. To my knowledge, four men have either been seriously hurt, gone missing or been killed, all in connection with this matter. I would strongly suggest you leave the area and take your daughter with you. We wouldn’t want her hurt in the crossfire even if you felt you should stay to pursue the perpetrator. ’

‘No indeed. I’ll escort her home at once.’ Lord Furness got up. ‘Thank you for your work here this morning, Dr Sandys.’

‘No thanks required. Arthur’s my brother. I’d do a hell of a lot more for him than dig a bullet out of his shoulder, but I won’t marry to his order.’

‘And he’s my friend– and I admit I wouldn’t either.’ Lord Furness pulled a wry expression. ‘However, if you find your circumstances change…?’

Jacob rose. ‘You are very kind, sir.’ He held out a hand then noticed it was still a little bloody under the nails. He made to lower it, but Lord Furness seized the hand and gave him a firm shake.

‘Good day, sir.’ Furness marched off, calling for his servants to ready his carriage.

* * *

Jacob came out of a guest room where he had changed into a borrowed shirt and washed off all traces of his unplanned surgery to find Lady Alice waiting for him in the hallway.

Prepared for a journey, she was already wearing her pelisse and hat, her heart-shaped face set off to perfection by the burgundy lining of the rim.

‘You are heading home, Lady Alice?’

‘On your orders, I understand,’ she said with a flick of annoyance. ‘I comprehend why it is necessary, but I refuse to treat it as a defeat.’

‘I imagine you rarely let anything defeat you.’ He bowed over her hand. ‘I wish you a safe journey. I must check on my brother.’ He turned to go.

‘Miss Fitz-Pennington said she had no claim on you,’ Lady Alice called after him. ‘She gave me her blessing to attempt to engage your affections.’

For a moment he felt a swoop of alarm at this sign that Dora wouldn’t fight for him, but then common sense returned.

Of course she had said that. Dora would never stand in his way if he was leaving, which she seemed to half expect even after all they’d shared.

Dora’s problem, he realised, was not believing that he fully intended to stick. He faced Lady Alice.

‘My lady, I beg you not to waste your time on me. You have so many attractions for a man of good sense, for someone who would love you and look forward to a life together with you.’

‘But you are a man of good sense.’

‘You don’t want me; you want the idea of a husband that you think I could be. But you’re wrong– you don’t know me if you think that. I’m the worst possible choice for you.’

‘Not the worst,’ she said with a humourless smile.

‘Well, maybe not,’ he conceded. ‘But I’m not the best– and you deserve the best.’ He nodded his head in a polite farewell and turned into the sickroom.

‘I’ll see you in London then?’ she called after him.

He closed the door and leaned against it.

Lady Alice was not defeated, merely deterred for the present.

And that made him wonder. The tumblers in this lock revolved into place as he saw the key to open it.

He and Dora had not considered love as a motive.

If Lady Alice didn’t take a refusal well, perhaps there was someone else who was not deterred by being told ‘no’?

There was someone who had a personal grudge against the Furness family, one who hoped to be more closely allied than fobbed off with a parsonage– and that wasn’t Knotte, was it?